Chapter 5 - THE DAUGHTER WHO DIDN’T WANT TO COME HOME
Finding Ava took forty-eight hours.
Meeting her took longer.
Her adoptive name was Anna Walsh.
She lived with Margaret Walsh, a retired middle-school librarian in Wisconsin.
Margaret had no idea who Anna really was.
She had been told the girl’s parents were dead.
When federal investigators and Adrien’s attorney finally explained enough to justify contact, Margaret gave Anna a choice.
Anna said no.
Adrien accepted it.
That surprised me.
He rented a room at a hotel ten miles away.
He waited.
Day one.
Nothing.
Day two.
Nothing.
On day three, Anna asked to meet Maria Delgado.
Me.
“Why me?” I asked.
Luca handed me one of Ava’s old files.
There was a photograph clipped inside.
Mateo.
The man who pulled her from the rain.
Ava remembered him.
She wanted to meet his wife.
We sat inside a quiet public library.
Anna was fourteen.
Tall.
Dark hair.
Adrien’s gray eyes.
She stared at me for almost a minute.
“Did Matt die?”
My throat tightened.
“Yes.”
She looked down.
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
“He gave me his jacket.”
I smiled through tears.
“He always complained he never had enough jackets.”
Anna almost smiled.
Then she asked:
“Did he ever say why he left me?”
“He didn’t.”
That mattered.
“He thought he gave you to someone who worked for your father.”
Anna nodded.
“Uncle Victor.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“No.”
Relief.
“He told me Dad was dangerous.”
I chose my words carefully.
“Your father is dangerous.”
Anna looked at me sharply.
“But that isn’t the same as everything Victor told you being true.”
She studied me.
“Do you trust him?”
Adrien.
“I work for him.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Smart girl.
“I trust him more today than I did a week ago.”
“Why?”
“Because he keeps asking what you want instead of deciding it.”
Anna went quiet.
Then she looked past me.
Adrien stood outside the library window.
Far enough away not to pressure her.
She had asked him not to enter.
He obeyed.
For fifteen minutes, Anna watched him through the glass.
Finally:
“Tell him he can come in.”
Adrien walked through the door like a man approaching a bomb.
Anna stood.
Neither moved.
Then Adrien said:
“Hi, Ava.”
She flinched.
“My name is Anna.”
His face changed.
“Okay.”
That one word saved him.
“Hi, Anna.”
Her eyes filled.
“Did you kill my mother?”
“No.”
Immediate.
Certain.
“Did your family?”
Adrien hesitated.
“I think someone in it did.”
Honest.
Anna started crying.
“So nobody came because everyone was lying?”
Adrien’s own eyes filled.
“I looked for you.”
“For how long?”
“Every day until they convinced me you were dead.”
She stared.
Then reached into her backpack.
A photograph.
A man leaving her school three weeks earlier.
Conrad Voss.
“He told me Victor was right.”
Adrien took the photo.
“What else?”
Anna swallowed.
“He said if I ever contacted you, Margaret would have an accident.”
Adrien’s face became frighteningly still.
But Anna wasn’t finished.
“He also said there was a reason I had to stay legally dead until I turned fifteen.”
I frowned.
“Why fifteen?”
Adrien already knew.
His mother had created a trust for Ava.
May you like
On her fifteenth birthday, if alive, Anna would gain ownership of thirty-five percent of Voss Logistics.
Conrad’s entire future depended on the world continuing to believe Ava Voss was dead.
